Long Island Songwriter's Showcase

LITTLE TOBY WINS BLUES AWARD

Readies New CD, Shares Songwriting Tips

By Pedro Pereira

Long Island's own blues original, Little Toby Walker, last month brought back an award from the International Blues Convention in Memphis. Little Toby won the solo acoustic division of the competition. Fifty-three blues acts from around the globe competed during the convention.

The award comes as Little Toby, an explosive performer with a penchant for getting audiences on their feet during shows, puts the finishing touches on tracks for his second CD. The CD, titled Cool Hand and slated for an April release, will feature mostly originals and a song about memory loss called I Can't Remember, possibly written by Bernice Hefland, though she can't remember.

Fresh off the Memphis competition, Little Toby took the time to share songwriting tips, though he confessed, "Until now I never really gave my writing process any thought, so this is just as new to you as it was to me." And that's just as well, since the bluesman who studied his craft with such masters as R.L. Burnside, plays and sings with such ease and intensity that he probably doesn't need to think about it much.

The melody for G.O.D. Dotcom, one of the songs in Cool Hand, came as an afterthought," he said. "I read about virtual churches online in the paper. Immediately the chorus of 'Give me that old time religion' became 'Give me that 'online religion' in my head, and I just started making up the words. I started to think about associations with church pews, saving your soul, stuffy churches, etc. Then I was thinking about why someone would want to attend an online church in the first place, perhaps out of laziness, not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, curiosity or the need for anonymity. Add a touch of something familiar, 'Salvation for your weary soul through Optimum Online,' and there you have it. Sometimes the lyrics took on a certain bizarre quality. For instance: 'I just got baptized, I never had to leave my house / I got my faced splashed with Holy Water with a simple click of the mouse.'"

Little Toby takes on another institution in Cool Hand - baseball. Baseball Blues is shuffle chockfull of double entendres: "Step up to the plate, I got a big bat in my hand / Just take one swing to prove I'm your man." In the chorus, he promises: I'll hit it right / I'll hit right / I'll hit it right, pretty baby / You know I'm bound to score." Despite the standard 12-bar shuffle format, Little Toby changed the chord structure slightly "to keep things interesting."

The instrumental Baker's Dozen came to him as he woke up one morning in Nashville. "I woke up with the melody in my head, clear as the sun that day. I just picked up the guitar and pretty much played the whole thing right there. I took out my portable tape recorder and taped it immediately or I would've completely forgotten it by breakfast."

Another Cool Hand track, It's Tough, was a song that I recorded years ago on cassette. I never was happy with it so I took a guitar groove from a previous jamming/practice session and simply worked the lyrics into that. The final product was an ongoing metamorphism, constantly being changed and
added to until I said, 'Geez, I think that's about it.'"